what is the word

Last nite's debate was way more exciting than the first, presidential round. But it's totally lame how the audience isn't allowed to express any audible reaction. I have said this over & over to anyone who will listen. It is fucking stupid. When a candidate delivers a razor-sharp insult, or a shrewdly pertinent historical example, the audience response really drives the point home. "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy" is a very cool line, but its Quayle-wounding power was probably multiplied a zillionfold by the loud cheers that followed.
For me, the best zing! of the nite came from Cheney, with whom I had found myself -- with a shocked, sinking feeling -- now & then nodding along. Good thing the awesome, casually tossed insult -- the bit about Edwards's attendance record in the Senate, where Cheney remarked, "I'm president of the Senate and the first time I ever met you was when you walked on stage tonight" -- turned out to be a lie. Still. I feel so dirty.
On an unrelated note, this morning I was hopping around, cleaning up my apartment for my friend Nicole's visit, trashing empty wine bottles & dumping out ashtrays, & the whole time I kept thinking about senior pages in yearbooks. What a dumb thing to be thinking about, but nevertheless I was thinking about all the ones I remembered. There was always the white-hat quoting the Grateful Dead, comparing high school to a long, strange trip. There was the idiot who was too stupid to think of anything but the Robert Frost bit about the yellow wood. There was the girl I actually liked -- she had tangled red hair that was always in her face & her page had a quote from On the Road, about "the only people for me are the mad ones" -- etc. Then I started thinking about how blogs are sort of like senior pages. You get to fuck with the formatting & write about what you want & quote whatever you want & put up photos & link to all your homies. The analogy works even better for Friendster & MySpace. Next time some asshole (usually myself) wonders why I feel the need to put all my private shit online, I’m going to respond that it’s my own personal yearbook senior page. I wasn’t completely satisfied with how mine turned out, ok? I'm still working on it.